Childlike

My little boy likes to jump. From the time he figured out what it was like to jump, he has never stopped.

Height is not an issue. He will take the jump and just trust that I will catch him. If I am not ready, he is going to jump anyway. He expects that I will catch him. Every time. There is never a time that he does not expect me to catch him.

Children are very trusting. They just automatically trust you. They don’t even know that there is an option not to trust you.

Honestly, this is how faith works. We are to trust God in all areas of our lives like a little boy trusts his daddy. I am not perfect. You are not perfect. There will come a time where your child trusts you to do something and you fail.

Ephesians 2:10 says, For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

If you look at this verse, if you are a disciple, God has prepared works for you to accomplish before you were ever born. In fact, he prepared these works for you before He created the world.

Now it makes sense to believe that if God has prepared these works for you to accomplish, then He will be faithful to use you to complete these works and He will never leave you in the process.

So what is it that keeps you from completely trusting God? Fear.

Fear of what?

Fear of the unknown

Fear of not being in total control

Fear of being left behind

Fear of…..

Fear is crippling. If you embrace fear, you will never do anything.

There is great freedom in relinquishing all control to God. When you are not worried or stressed about how things are going to work or how the circumstances are going to fold out, you are unleashed to trust God in a way that you never have before.

I must tell you this. This is not a tip toe decision. This is not a trying to peek around the corner to see what you can’t see yet decision.

Like my little boy who not only trusts that I will catch him when he jumps, he expects me to catch him.

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I love listening to my two year old son talk. I like how he does his best to say words even when they don’t come out just right. The fun part is watching him grow and try new sounds and say words that he used to not be able to say or words that he had trouble saying.

There is a time almost ever morning when he wakes up, where he will come out of his room and look for me. When he finds me; he runs and lifts his arms as I lift him high into the air. Then I bring him down and we do a daddy and son bear hug. I tell him that I love him. Then he responds with the words that I do not think I will ever tire of hearing, “I love you too daddy.”

The Bible makes clear that God is our Heavenly Father and we are His children. The difference between God and an earthly father is this: God is not flawed in any way. God is not affected by sin. God does not yell. God does not have a short temper. God is not selfish.

God is a perfect Father. I am not. I can only do my best to be a godly father and point my boys to Jesus. I want them to see Jesus as their Lord and Savior, the Holy Spirit as their comforter and guide and God as the Holy, Perfect, Father.

As I love to hear my son tell me that he loves me, God loves to hear his children talk to Him.

God wants you, His child, to talk and share with Him. He cares for you in the most perfect sense of the word. He wants you to share your joy, pain, celebrations, struggles, frustrations, prayers, He wants you to share everything.

Just like a dad loves to watch his children play, interact, and learn; God loves to watch His children learn, grow, mature, and thrive. God loves it when His children learn new things, memorize new verses, share the Gospel with a lost friend, pray for the healing of a loved one, give to the church, give to a charity, love. God loves when we are obedient.

A dad wants his children to love him and more than that enjoy being with him. Whether it is eating at McDonald’s, watching Thomas the train, playing with cars, running in the park or reading a story, a dad wants his children to enjoy him.

God wants you to enjoy Him. In the words of the Westminster catechism, “Man’s chief and highest end is to glorify God, and fully to enjoy him forever.”

It is perfectly fine for you to enjoy being with your Heavenly Father.

Run to Him.

Talk to Him.

Laugh with Him.

Cry with Him.

Rejoice with Him.

Praise Him.

Glorify Him.

He wants to spend time with you. He wants to listen to you. Go to your Heavenly Father and tell Him how much you love Him. His response will always be how much He loves you too.

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A child is never too young to learn. From the time they start watching the movement of your lips when you talk to how they study your reaction to all kinds of situations, you are their new favorite subject.

My wife and I have two boys. I am overcome with joy that God would allow us to parent these two amazing little guys.

Part of being a dad is understanding the responsibility of being a parent. Scripture makes it clear that we are to parent our children for their good and for the glory of God.

Proverbs 22:6 says, “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.” Dad. You are the pastor of your home. You are the spiritual leader of your family. It does not matter if your child has the best clothes, best toys, and state of the art video game system. It does not matter if your child makes all A’s in school or plays Little League Baseball. It does not matter if your child is the quarterback of the high school football team. It does not matter what college your child gets into or if he goes to college at all. What does matter and it matters more than any kind of success in this world, is that you point your child to Jesus.

Little boys usually see their daddy as their hero. Before Iron Man, Batman, Spider-Man, Thor, or Superman, you dad are their hero. They love you. They watch you. They want to be like you.

Your family will be your greatest disciples so it goes without saying that you will be held responsible for how you raise your child. Your child watches you, studies you, mimics you. This is important for you to grasp. Your child is learning by watching you.

So.

How do you react when you hit your finger with a hammer?

Do you go ballistic when you lose your keys?

How do you treat your wife in front of your child? Is it different from how you treat her in public? Are you sending your child mixed signals?

Has your child ever caught you looking at porn or watching movies with nudity in them? Don’t teach your child how to lust after a woman. Teach him how to honor, cherish, and treasure her. She is created in the image of God. She is not the object of your selfish, sick, flawed, sinful, desires.

Has your child ever seen you read the Bible? Have you read the Bible with him?

Has your child ever seen you pray? Do you pray with your child?

Does your child know that you love Jesus?

Boys have a lot to deal with growing up. It will not be long before a girl catches their eye. It will not be long before they understand the difference between what is appropriate and inappropriate for a girl to wear. Boys will learn about temptation. How will you teach them to deal with temptations and lust? How will you push them to Jesus? Do you have a plan to share the gospel with them?

Your child needs to see the example of a disciple that is passionate about Jesus in his daddy. Your child needs to see a disciple that is unashamed of the gospel in his daddy.

Plan now.

Take into context your child and his attention span and how he learns. The message of the gospel does not change but the methods do. You have to have methods for sharing Jesus with your child.

Like this:

Charles Spurgeon said, “God will not bless those teachers who do not grasp in their hearts the really fallen estate of their children.”

Because of Adam, every person that has ever been born is born with a sinful heart. Jeremiah 17:9 says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” Paul echoes Jeremiah by writing in Romans 3, “As it is written, None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God.”

Anyone that says that a person at their core is good has never had a two year old.

You do not have to teach a child how to sin, disobey, or misbehave. It just happens naturally. What is in the heart will come out.

Knowing this is true, I am perplexed to try and understand why some parents in our churches today are more concerned with their child’s academic or financial success instead of their spiritual walk with Jesus.

If the parents do not value Jesus in the home, it is highly likely that the child will not value Jesus either.

You must feel the heaviness of the lostness of your child. Apart from being regenerated by Jesus, the child is doomed to spend eternity apart from God in hell. This should make you very uncomfortable.

It is gut wrenching to know that you could possibly spend eternity and never see your child. It is more gut wrenching to know that you wasted your life pushing your child to conform more to the American dream then to Jesus. There is nothing wrong with wanting your child to have a college degree, a good job, or an awesome marriage. However, that should not take the place of you wanting to see your child redeemed by the blood of Christ that was shed on the cross.

You cannot save your child. You alone do not have the ability to bring salvation to your child.

This should drive you to your knees. You should cry out to Jesus.

You have been given the awesome task of raising a child in a gospel-centered way. Your goal is to push your child to Jesus. You are your child’s parent. You are not their friend, buddy, or pal.

If you do not love Jesus, you cannot teach your child how to love Jesus. You cannot take your child to the cross if you have never been there.

You must have first experienced the outpouring of grace and mercy that Jesus gives you by snatching you from the road to hell and placing you in His flock; or you cannot be the example of a life that has been wrecked by Jesus.

Raising a child in a godly home is not easily done alone. Pray that the Holy Spirit will give you guidance in how you should raise, parent, train, and teach your child according to the Scriptures.

“Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.” Proverbs 22:6 ESV.

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There are nights where a good night’s rest seems to evade my wife and me. Somewhere between 2:00 and 4:00 in the morning, my little boy will wake up crying. There are times where we do pick him up and let him sleep in our bed. It takes him a little while to go back to sleep but eventually he will.

However, there is another way I deal with this too. It seems to be pretty effective. There are some nights where I will go into his room and let him know that I am there and that everything is going to be alright. I will either sit in a chair or lay down in the floor beside his bed and somehow he is comforted just knowing that I am in the room. Before long, he has gone right back to sleep. There is something comforting to a little boy when Daddy says, “I am here.” and “Everything is going to be alright.”

God does the same thing with us.

God calls us his children. He delights in us calling him Abba, that is a personal and intimate name that we translate into Daddy. It is perfectly fine for us to go to God as a little boy goes to his daddy. God listens to the needs and prayers of his children.

There are times when you know you have played the prodigal and run away from home. You feel like you have come to the end of your rope and you have exhausted all options. You realize that you can’t fix it yourself. So, at last, you do what you should have done in the first place…call out to the Father. Then a peace comes over you because you heard your Father say, “I am here.”

The Father picks up his child and wipes the tears from his eyes. The Father hugs his child and the boy knows that he is safe. The Father speaks in a confident, kind, loving voice. The Father loves that his child is now at home where he belongs.

It does not matter what you have done in the past. It does not matter what you did today. Your identity is not found in your past. Your identity is not found in what happens to you. You are not your degree. You are not your job. Your identity is made up of the very fabric of who Christ says that you are.

Because of Christ, God sees you as holy. You are a saint. God calls you his child.

Find peace in knowing that you are a child of the All Sovereign, Majestic, Almighty, Holy, Just, Heavenly Father.

You may feel like that you have strayed too far from the Father and you have put a lot of distance between him and you. However, the reality is this. If the Father truly calls you his child, then he always knows where you are.

You may think that you have roamed too far in chasing your own pursuits and pleasures but you will find out when the Father calls you back that there is no greater place to be then in the Father’s presence.

Like this:

There is something peaceful and relaxing while watching a child enjoy something as simple as a slide in the park or a cup of yogurt and a plastic spoon.

I enjoy watching my son play. He has a very curious imagination. He sometimes will play with a box rather than the toy that came inside it.

He enjoys using the lids from our pots and pans as cymbals. Laundry baskets can be anything from a toy box to a place to hide. Clothes hangers become hammers. It is interesting to just watch him as he finds enjoyment in playing with everyday, ordinary, routine objects.

Recently, he has started to enjoy helping us put the groceries away. He knows where sodas go. He knows where cereal and canned food goes. He is thrilled to help.

Then it hits me.

Why can we not do the same thing?

The Westminster Catechism says: The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.

We get to glorify God in all that we do AND enjoy Him for as long as we live.

Your service should not come from any sort of obligation. Your service should come from your passion, desire and willingness to glorify God in all that you do.

Take joy in your service to God. Enjoy God in everything you do. You don’t have to enjoy God but you get to enjoy Him. This is fantastic. You can take pleasure in the One who created you. You can take pleasure in the One who snatched your soul from the road to a God-less eternity. You can take pleasure in the One who called you to be a messenger that walks in the authority given to you by Jesus.

Jesus did not give you this abundant life to glorify yourself. That is not living life to the full. That is living life to fill your ego and pride.

Take joy in God. Love Him, serve Him, obey Him, in all that you do glorify Him.